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The Spirit World and “What Really” Is compared with religious belief systems and scientific speculation and cultural traditions.
When I die, or “pass,” I intend to return and find reliable mediums to communicate with, to contact my loved ones and also interested researchers, and continue this conversation about the Spirit World, as many have done before me, from first-hand experience.
We have already gathered a vast amount of information about God and the Spirit World in our bibles and other scriptures, which have emerged through different cultures and in more modern times, in the communications received through mediums working both within the Spiritualist and Spiritist organisations world-wide and from mediums working independently outside any religious discipline.
From these communications and individual accounts, many of which are reviewed already in the articles here on TheSpiritGuides website, we can see how local customs, beliefs and cultures have tinged the descriptions of life in the Spirit World. Added to that ‘contamination,’ we notice that the mindset and assumptions of the individual mediums and their followers and disciples distorts the information sometimes. Then various conflicting interpretations emerge.
If we look at the Old Testament, from the accounts of Abraham and Moses onwards, and their contact with Jahweh, or God, and then the New Testament, and other scriptures from Islam, the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam and the earlier Islamic sects, (Sunnis, Shiites and others), then Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and so on, and more recently, Baha'iism, Mormonism, and the different organisations of Spiritualism and Spiritism, we can see variations of belief as the different mediums, prophets and priests come through with their different and varying messages and teachings.
As a religion and culture was formed round these teachings, they became formalized into a rigid system of thought, with different accounts of the Spirit World, and of God. Even within the same religion there have emerged different images and systems or paradigms. So each religion has its different sects, with conflicting beliefs about heaven and hell, the devil and demons, and even various conflicting gods and angels and entities which are worshipped, revered or despised. Human nature being what it is, we are divided by disputes and variations of belief which demolish any attempt of attaining world peace in the present time.
The myths and legends which become part of worship even in modern Christianity, Islam and Judaism prevent our seeing or accepting the truth, and so do the materialist theories and ideas of modern science and materialist theories and ideals of communism, democracy, fascism, dictatorship and even royalty.
The culture also distorts our view of reality and the visions received after drug taking are not reliable glimpses of the real Spirit World or the Greater Reality.
The most valuable way of examining the Spirit World is to shelve all our religious beliefs, dreams, nightmares, drug-induced hallucinations and myths and legends, and review the accounts of the Spirit World received from the time of Swedenborg in the middle of the Eighteenth Century up through Modern Spiritualism to the present day – through ALL our mediums, not just one. Turning ONE medium or prophet into the one and only contact and representative of God Himself, or his Mother, or his only son or daughter, has caused so much dispute, because, of course, there are many other claimants to those titles. We should review and compare all the accounts of the Afterlife from all our mediums and healers, including, among many hundreds of thousands of others, Andrew Jackson Davis, Alice Bailey, Anthony Borgia, the Fox sisters, Leslie Flint, Maurice Barbanell, Colin Fry and Theresa Percuto. Add to this the records of communications within all our home circles over the years, and we can compile a general up-to-date account of the workings of the Spirit World. In doing this we are likely to incur the wrath of the orthodox religions and the materialist scientists, because we become heretics in their eyes. However, in old age, already standing on the doorstep into the next world, I personally have to put aside all belief systems, and trust the more recent accounts of the Spirit World.
I see the old religious beliefs, which are full of fear and trepidation, as distortions of the truth, myths and legends appropriate to the times and cultures from which they emerged, but no longer relevant today, when we find we must learn to accept other cultures and find ways to live together without killing each other over difference of belief. All religions old and new, advocate certain ethical standards to live by. If we really believed in these universal virtues, we would live in harmony.
However, I recognise that it is difficult to live with an evangelical fundamentalist Christian who believes in eternal fire and damnation, or with a militant Muslim who believes all believers outside Islam are heretics, as are Christian Protestants in the eyes of some orthodox Roman Catholics.
Modern accounts of the Spirit World can be found in most of the autobiographies of present-day mediums and in the more general collections of teachings and philosophy found in Spiritualist publications. I find this vast literature compatible with my own personal experience of the Spirit World. Though I have been standing on the doorstep for more than 70 years, after an NDE back then, I am not ready to go across yet, but I have no fear of doing so when my time comes, nor should anyone else.
Prejudice, bigotry and intolerance in human nature are hard to deal with, butpossessing or having access to a library of relevant books to add to our own spiritual experience puts us outside that negative frame of mind entirely. In another article I will compile a short-list of some of the books likely to be found in that type of library. It is a pity that with all the information made available over the past 200 years or more from communications with the Spirit World, none of our religions have offered us anything newer than 1000 or 2000 years old.
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